The Ladby ship is a major ship burial

Ship burial

A ship burial or boat grave is a burial in which a ship or boat is used either as a container for the dead and the grave goods, or as a part of the grave goods itself. If the ship is very small, it is called a boat grave...

, of the type also represented by the boat chamber grave of Hedeby

Hedeby

Hedeby |heath]]land, and býr = yard, thus "heath yard"), mentioned by Alfred the Great as aet Haethe , in German Haddeby and Haithabu, a modern spelling of the runic Heiðabý was an important trading settlement in the Danish-northern German borderland during the Viking Age...

 and the ship burials of Oseberg

Oseberg ship

The Oseberg ship is a well-preserved Viking ship discovered in a large burial mound at the Oseberg farm near Tønsberg in Vestfold county, Norway.-Burial mound:...

, Borre

Borre mound cemetery

Borre mound cemetery forms part of the in Horten, Vestfold, Norway....

, Gokstad

Gokstad ship

The Gokstad ship is a Viking ship found in a burial mound at Gokstad farm in Sandar, Sandefjord, Vestfold, Norway.-Discovery:The place where the boat was found, situated on arable land, had long been named Gokstadhaugen or Kongshaugen , although the relevance of its name had been discounted as...

 and Tune

Tune ship

The Tune ship is a Viking era ship exhibited in the Viking Ship Museum in Bygdøy, Oslo.The "karv" type ship was found at Haugen farm on Rolvsøy in Tune, Østfold, Norway. The ship was built around AD 900, and is made of clinkered oak planks. It was found in a boat burial mound...

 in South Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

, all of which date back to the 9th and 10th centuries. It is the only ship burial discovered in Denmark. It was discovered southwest of Kerteminde

Kerteminde

Kerteminde , is a town in central Denmark, located in Kerteminde Municipality on the island of Funen. The town has a population of 5,698 . It is a small harbor town surrounded by farms...

 on the island of Funen

Funen

Funen , with a size of 2,984 km² , is the third-largest island of Denmark following Zealand and Vendsyssel-Thy, and the 163rd largest island of the world. Funen is located in the central part of the country and has a population of 454,358 inhabitants . The main city is Odense, connected to the...

.

The grave is situated within an ordinary burial site, from the Viking

Viking

The term Viking is customarily used to refer to the Norse explorers, warriors, merchants, and pirates who raided, traded, explored and settled in wide areas of Europe, Asia and the North Atlantic islands from the late 8th to the mid-11th century.These Norsemen used their famed longships to...

 Age. Excavations revealed an abundance of grave goods

Grave goods

Grave goods, in archaeology and anthropology, are the items buried along with the body.They are usually personal possessions, supplies to smooth the deceased's journey into the afterlife or offerings to the gods. Grave goods are a type of votive deposit...

 consisting both of objects and of animals. It was previously dated to the early 10th century, based on a gilded link of bronze for a dog-harness, decorated in Jelling

Jelling

Jelling is a village in Denmark with a population of 3,248 , located in Jelling Parish approx. 10 km northwest of Vejle. The city lies 105 metres above sea level.-Location:...

 style, that was found there.

The grave had been extensively disturbed and, since only a few small human bones were found, this has been interpreted to be a translation

Translation

Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...

, i.e. removal from a heathen to a Christian grave. Another more likely interpretation is that the struggle for dominance by King Haraldr Blátönn

Harald I of Denmark

Harald "Bluetooth" Gormsson was the son of King Gorm the Old and of Thyra Dannebod. He died in 985 or 986 having ruled as King of Denmark from around 958 and King of Norway for a few years probably around 970...

 and his heir, Sveinn Tjúguskegg, may have led to the grave being desecrated. It was, after all, a symbol of power very visible to all who travelled or lived in the area, glorifying the minor king buried there. By removing the deceased and chopping all his grave goods into hundreds of pieces within a few years of the burial, the attackers presumably gave his heirs a great blow to their family prestige.

The excavation was performed by G. Rosenberg, conservator, and P. Helweg Mikkelsen, pharmacist, between 1934 and 1937. Their original drawings constitute the primary source-material for information on the find. P.Helweg Mikkelsen also showed himself to be a patron of historical landmarks by paying for an arched building to be raised over the site, which was then covered with earth and grass. This was then given to the National Museum, which had full responsibility for the site until 1994, when it passed to the department of Archaeology and Landscape at the Viking Museum at Ladby (part of The Museums of Eastern Funen).

Now the Viking Museum at Ladby displays many of the original finds and gives an overview of the Viking era on northeast Funen. The new building also contains a reconstruction of the ship burial. It shows the scene as it may have looked right after the funeral, with the deceased chieftain lying on a bed in a full-scale replica of his ship, with all his grave goods, near his dogs and his eleven horses. There is also an interpretive movie about the Vikings' beliefs regarding the journey to the kingdom of the dead, based on Norse myths and the Gotlandic Runestones.

External links

• Museum homepage Click on English.